Google launches Android 14 Developer Preview for Pixel Phones

Google announced the Android 14 Developer Preview. You can install it now on the Google Pixel 7 Pro and other supported Pixel phones. It offers a glimpse at what we can expect from the new Android release. However, it does not contain all upcoming consumer-facing features yet. Here’s what Google announced for the Android 14 Developer Preview 1 and what else we can expect.

Google launches Android 14 Developer Preview for Pixel Phones

As of DP1, there are five tentpoles, starting with “Working across devices and form factors.” Google says “Android 14 builds on the work done in Android 12L and 13 to support tablets and foldable form factors.” Google cites recent work on layouts and large screen guidelines, with the goal of making it easier to optimize apps for various form factors with every Android release. In terms of working across devices, Google points to the Cross-device SDK, which will power the cross-device audio switching announced earlier this year.

On the Customization front, end users “will be able to scale up their font to 200%,” which is up from 130% on Pixel devices today.

To mitigate issues where the text gets too large, Google applied a non-linear font scaling curve in Android 14. This ensures that text that is already large enough doesn’t increase at the same rate as smaller text.

A Grammatical Inflection API will let developers “more easily add support for users who speak languages which have grammatical gender.”

To improve Privacy and Security, Android 14 will prevent apps with a targetSdkVersion lower than 23 (Android 6.0 in 2015) from being installed. However, the older installed apps on devices upgrading to Android 14 will not be impacted.

At launch, Android 14 Developer Preview system images are available for the Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 5a, Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6a, Pixel 7, and Pixel 7 Pro, as well as the Android Emulator.

DP1 (UPP1.230113.009) with the February 2023 security patch is official for developers only. It is only available via manual download and flashing/sideloading. Moreover, the public-facing Android Beta is coming later in April.

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